The Roman poet Juvenal (circa 100 A.D.) wrote regarding the way latter-day Roman emperors retained power and control over the masses that were seemingly more than happy to obsess themselves with trivialities and self-indulgences while their once-great-and-powerful empire collapsed before their very eyes. He wrote:

“Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions–everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”

It used to be when men stripped their shirts off and painted their faces, they were heading to the battlefield to kill the tyrant’s troops.

I submit that a good many in America are, like Rome of old, carelessly frittering away their God-given liberties, foolishly clamoring for nothing more than government handouts and never-ending entertainment. Millions and millions of Americans (especially males) are literally intoxicated with sports. Sports are no longer a great American pastime; they are now a great American obsession.

Mind you, this writer has been a sports fan all of his life. I began playing organized basketball in the fifth grade; I was on the high school wrestling team; I played football in high school and college; and I ran track. Still today, I enjoy watching a good NFL game (yes, I’m still a Green Bay Packers fan), a good college game when the Gators are playing, a good NCAA men’s basketball game (especially during the tournament–even more so when the Hoosiers are in it), and any NBA championship series between the Celtics and Lakers (I root for Boston). And I even like to watch a round of professional golf once in a while (it helps me go to sleep when I’m trying to take a nap). But none of the above will interfere with anything that is important, and I am not going to plan my whole universe around any of it. If it is convenient, I will watch. If it’s not, I will read about it in the sports section of the newspaper. And I’m certainly not going to spend my hard-earned money following any sports team (even those I like) all over the country like some rock band groupie.

I am not talking about sports in general; I am talking about the way many American men have allowed sports to control and dominate their lives. With many, sports are not just a hobby; they are a religion. I cannot count the number of conversations between men that I overhear in restaurants, airplanes, boardrooms, and, yes, even church houses, in which every man in the circle is literally consumed with all sorts of sports facts, information, and opinions. In many such discussions, these men will talk about nothing else. To these men, there is absolutely nothing in the world more important than the latest sports score, announcement, or trade. NOTHING!

And there is also a very real psychological pitfall associated with a man’s intoxication with sports. I submit that an obsession with sports gives men a false sense of masculinity and actually serves to steal true manhood from them.

For example, it used to be when men stripped their shirts off and painted their faces, they were heading to the battlefield to kill the tyrant’s troops. Now they are headed off to the sports coliseum to watch a football game. A man’s ego and machismo was once used to protect his family and freedom; now it’s used to tout batting averages and box scores. The fact is, if we could get the average American male to get as exercised and energized about defending the historic principles upon which liberty and Western Civilization are built as he is in defending his favorite quarterback or NASCAR driver, our country would not be in the shape it is in today.

The sad reality is that much of today’s masculinity is experienced only vicariously through a variety of sports teams and personalities. Instead of personally flexing our muscles for God and country, freedom and liberty, or home and hearth, we punch the air and beat our chests over touchdowns and home runs (even though we had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with them ourselves). Instead of getting in the face of these would-be tyrants in Washington, D.C., who are doing everything they can to steal the American dream, we get in the face of the poor umpire who makes a bad call or the Little League coach who doesn’t play my son enough. Our happiness, well-being, and mood are not determined by anything personally achieved (or lost), but by what others accomplished (or didn’t accomplish) at the ball park. Whether our children inherit a land of liberty and freedom does not seem nearly as important as whether they make the starting lineup on the football team.

In Greece, workers riot against austerity measures imposed by the IMF. In 2009 major social unrest and riots erupted in Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria over the financial crisis and the prospect of drastically lower standards of living. The IMF has predicted “violent protests could break out in countries worldwide if the financial system was not restructured to benefit everyone rather than a small elite.”

“Similar outbursts of civil unrest have occurred in recent weeks across the periphery of Europe, where the global financial crisis has buffeted smaller countries with fewer resources to defend their economies. Especially in Eastern Europe, the turmoil reflects surging political discontent and threatens to topple shaky governments that have been the focus of popular resentment over corruption for years,” the Washington Post reported in January, 2009. Iceland faced civil unrest after the banksters attempted to saddle it with staggering debt.

“The financial meltdown has become part of the real economy and is now beginning to shape real politics. More and more citizens on the edge of the global crisis are taking to the streets,” writes Roger Boyes for The Sunday Times.

In the United States, riots have yet to break out over the Greatest Bankster Heist in History and the looming Greatest Depression.

Instead people take to the streets and break and torch private property following a basketball game.

“Violent riots broke out in Los Angeles following the LA Lakers’ championship-clinching win over the Boston Celtics in the NBA finals,” reports The Sun today. “LAPD officers clashed with crowds in streets surrounding the stadium, with rowdy fans smashing windows, starting fires and attacking passing motorists.”

Cops were dispatched and fired “non-lethal rounds to disperse mobs of troublemakers, as a cab was set alight and two newspaper stands ripped apart… At least one civilian was badly beaten and a police officer suffered a broken nose in street fights. A cyclist was also hit by a patrol car attending the crisis… In nearby restaurant La Bella Cucina, customers threw bottles, overturned tables and stole alcohol.” Trash cans were set afire, three vehicle torched and 18 medical aid requests were received for people ill or injured, and eight people were transported by ambulance to hospitals. Some of the injuries were “quite serious,” according to officials.

“It’s these young people who don’t know how to behave,” a woman told the Associated Press.

Imagine how these mindless idiots will behave after the global elite finalize their plan to take down America and impose austerity measures.

Homeland Security and police departments all over the country have trained and prepared for social chaos and violence for some time now. Dim-witted sports fans may not realize there is a storm on the horizon. The government knows it is coming and has prepared.

In late 2008 the U.S. Army War College released a white paper called Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development. The report warned that the military must be prepared for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.”

In the not too distant future it will not be cops responding to rioters and looters. It will be the military. Soldiers are not trained to subdue and arrest unruly citizens. They are trained to kill people and break things.

Alex Jones gives the inside scoop on basketball MVP LeBron James’ pivotal trade decision… err, I mean, rather breaks down how society has become obsessed with celebrity culture and taken its eye off of important world events, allowing corruption and global domination to take root. While LeBron announces his move to Miami, the mindless sports fans of America have essentially ignored larger problems.

Here are people by the tens of thousands begging LeBron James to stay on their team, yet these same people won’t go out and protest the looting of the Federal government, the banker-bailout or even the BP oil spill.

Yes, modern bread and circuses– endless ballgames, television and gossip about celeb birthday parties– has driven our culture to embrace the meaningless, while reducing our consciousness to mindless drivel. America– once the greatest cradle of imagination and wealth has fallen to a land of virtual morons who look up to decadent system-icons instead of leaders who could drive our future to greatness once again.

The sight of American citizens gathering to protest basketball player LeBron James’ decision to join Miami Heat last week, after Ohio Governor Ted Strickland joined celebrities to serenade James in a bizarre appeal video entitled “We are LeBron,” was a shocking reminder of how millions of Americans are more concerned about sports teams than the fact that their country is collapsing around them, and how potent a threat such wanton delusion is to the survival of freedom and prosperity in the United States.

But how did we reach the stage where scenes from Idiocracy, a satirical movie set 500 years in the future where humanity has “degenerated into into a dystopia where advertising, commercialism, and cultural anti-intellectualism run rampant and dysgenic pressure has resulted in a uniformly stupid human society devoid of individual responsibility or consequences,” seem eerily contemporary in 2010?

Americans are watching more television than ever before, both through conventional TV sets and on the web, as the range of channels continues to expand, the screens get bigger and the quality of the picture increases as new hi-definition and 3D technologies arrest and shorten attention spans to a greater and greater degree.

Hooked in to this matrix medium that tells them how to behave, what to care about, and how to treat people who deviate from this spoon-fed consensus, people are literally being programmed into accepting a contrived false reality that bears little or no resemblance to what is actually taking place in the real world. This is why the assembly line of zombies being manufactured by this process will roll their eyes when warned about real issues that affect them – the crumbling economy, unemployment, the BP oil spill – yet will become visibly upset when an event that has no bearing on their existence whatsoever, like where LeBron James throws a basketball around, takes place.

We are literally being trained like dogs to react to meaningless stimuli while burying our heads in the sand in reaction to issues of real significance. This behavior training encompasses an entire outlook, an entire lifestyle that people have adopted to the point where their moral compass, they way they dress, the way they speak, what they eat, what drugs they take, the way they respond to events and how they treat other people is solely a construct of the babylon system to which they are addicted.

The fact that this matrix system constantly promotes damaging and destructive messages is why people are fat, unhealthy, unhappy, addicted to drugs, and unsuccessful in maintaining relationships. They are a product of their brainwashing. Downloading viruses from an infected culture on a daily basis, people’s hard drives – their brains – are corrupted, lethargic, and barely able to function. This is why people seek out destructive pursuits that do nothing to benefit their long-term personal interests. This is why people no longer talk to their neighbors or get involved in their communities. This is why people care more about LeBron James than their own country collapsing around them – because that’s the content of the programming they have downloaded.

The controllers of this babylon system have superimposed a fantasy world over reality, they have slapped blinkers over the eyes of millions of Americans who continue to lead deluded, stunted and oblivious lives while the criminals behind the curtain scheme to wreck the country. A perfect example of this is how the government keeps insisting that the economy is getting better while in reality unemployment grows, tent cities pop up in major areas and the housing market gets worse.

When Americans know more about baseball and basketball than they do about their own history – to the point now where as a recent Jay Leno clip exemplified, college professors can’t even relate basic facts about the founding of the country – America is in danger.

Freedom and prosperity can only continue to exist in a country where informed and active citizens act as watchmen and women to protect those virtues. History has taught us that decadence, moral and intellectual decay are always followed by a collapse in society as darkness fills in the void that good has vacated.

Americans have to look themselves in the mirror and decide whether or not worshipping LeBron James is worth the price of a destitute and demoralized country in which living standards are eviscerated and freedoms are easily revoked.

Imagine if Americans got as angry and upset about the fact that their country is being seized by criminal globalist interests who want to destroy the United States in pursuit of a global government as they do when their sports team loses or their star player is transferred?

Our job is to issue a jolt of shock therapy to millions of hypnotized Americans who have the establishment-imposed mantra running through their heads that everything will be OK as long as they just continue to ignore reality and keep their head buried in American Idol or the NBA season.

Only through a massive media backlash can we reach people and make them understand that they have been conditioned into accepting a false sense of reality and that real happiness and fulfillment can only be achieved, and that America can only be rescued, once they fully embrace the truth of what is really happening around them.

I think most right thinking people are agreed that physical effects aside, the content of the majority of TV programming today (I emphasise the word programming, a process that involves a passive receptor of information) is designed to instil a social worldview and value system that is self-centric and is in fact the opposite of what a healthy and enduring society requires. Individualism at any cost rules the day and it is more and more evident that empathy for one’s fellow citizen and a sense of personal responsibility are rapidly vanishing along with the morality that all healthy civilisations have known to be necessary for survival. Only recently a car I was travelling in was bumped from behind by a driver who was, I would guess, in his mid to late thirties, looked quite respectable and drove a new and expensive car. Rather than stop and offer his details for the damage done he feigned an apology and when our vehicle pulled off to park safely he took his opportunity to flee the scene, no doubt congratulating himself on avoiding a messy process involving insurance agencies etc. People today are only made to feel guilt when caught and exposed for their crimes. They have no higher authority to fear and the current direction of societal attitudes puts paid to that particular view often espoused that it is possible to remain moral and upstanding without religion or a guiding moral principal if you prefer. The crime figures, road rage and general attitude of fellow citizens would tend to indicate otherwise. I believe TV has much blame to shoulder for this.

People spend a lot of their spare time in front of the television. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to state that TV is a major source of many people’s opinions and views on pretty much everything. Given the amount of time people spend watching television it makes perfect sense that if you want to shape public opinion the TV is the medium par excellence by which to disseminate your information. It stands to reason then that if you agree that a movement exists, and I think a lot of people of do, whose aim is to re-make the world in man’s image, albeit a skewed and perverse one, then it makes sense for such an organisation to consolidate control of the TV airwaves and turn it into a propaganda video-drome. Some might say that the proof is in the pudding, that TV is so biased toward the crude, libertine, amoral lifestyle and that the portrayal of the Christian religion, the very force that created our society, is so negative, misinformed and hostile that surely such a conspiracy exists. Now to extrapolate this thought is an article unto itself but the facts are there and the conspiracy is out in the open. To give just two examples, we have the admission by the

BBC following a leaking of an internal memo wherein it was admitted that they are anti-Christ in their outlook. After complaints that BBC programming repeatedly errs on the side of sensitivity to Islam & other minorities (religious or otherwise) & bias against Christianity (especially Roman Catholicism), the British Broadcasting Corporation has admitted its guilt. A summit meeting of BBC officials culminated in admissions that “the BBC is not impartial or neutral,” as BBC political editor Andew Marr put it. The closed-door summit’s conclusions were leaked to the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday.

Evidence also exists that governments control news output and content. On January 14,1983 President Reagan of the USA signed into effect directive 77 which gave the CIA and government full power to determine and control the content of news that the American public receives, news which can now be uploaded and or modified in minutes with modern technology. Goebbels would be proud. Think about it. It only takes a decision made by one chief editor to determine the news received by millions and in the US it is said that upwards of 90% of all media formats including newspapers and magazines are controlled by 3 or 4 corporations, a number which is going down as more and more news agencies are bought up and amalgamated. All an agency has do to make sure the news delivered suits a particular agenda is to put a very small number of people into the right positions.

Alex Jones, a rising star in the American “Truth Movement” is an independent syndicated radio talk-show host and investigative journalist from Austin, Texas. He has had personal contact with people from many of the US’s major news agencies like FOX and CNN and he says that many people employed with these companies don’t agree with the style and content of news produced and in fact know and believe much of it to be contrived, mis-represented or simply incorrect.

The physical way in which TV affects the brain makes it a perfect vehicle for propaganda. It’s important to note that your eyes grow directly, stem-like, from the brain. They really are the window to the soul and the perfect conduit to access the brain’s inner sanctums.

The human brain works at 4 basic frequencies. These are Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta.

Beta waves are produced when one is thinking and using one’s higher faculties and Delta is associated with sleep and/or deep trance like states. The radiant light and flicker rates of TV cause the brain to drop down to a level of activity somewhere between Alpha and Theta – essentially a sleepy dreamlike state of mind where the higher critical functions are turned off. Even if you’re reading text on a television screen the brain registers low levels of Alpha wave activity. Theta brainwaves engage inner and intuitive subconscious. You will find theta in places where you hold memories, sensations and emotions Any information therefore imbibed from the TV by-passes our logical, critically thinking sieve and goes straight into those sub areas of the mind associated with more emotive response. TV then appeals more to the emotions than the mind and of course how many of us engage in lively informed debate anymore? Very few. The more common reaction to big questions is usually an emotive response followed by a quick change in subject. TV viewing is a somatic experience which means it is “of the body, not of the mind”. I’m reminded of Huxley’s book, ”Brave New World” where the drug of choice was called soma and enabled people to escape un-palatable intellectual life problems.

Psychologist Thomas Mulholland found that after just 30 seconds of watching television the brain begins to produce alpha waves, which indicates torpid (almost comatose) rates of activity. Alpha brain waves are associated with unfocused, overly receptive states of consciousness. A high occurrence of alpha wave activity does not occur normally when the eyes are open. In fact, Mulholland’s research implies that watching television is neurologically analogous to staring at a blank wall. It’s worth noting that the goal of hypnotists is to induce slow brain wave states. Alpha waves are present during the ‘light hypnotic’ state used by hypnotherapists for suggestion therapy.

The critical side of your brain is the left. As you read this you are making judgements, passing opinions and coming to conclusions which take the form of beta brain wave activity. These are the waves activated when you begin to use that left hand side, the centre of logical human communication and analysis.

Researchers have found that once the television set is switched on, that left hand side and all it’s faculties tends to switch off. Instead the image from television go straight to the right brain. The switch from beta to alpha waves shows this. Alpha brain waves are the ones we associate with meditation and sleep. By no means does this mean that we are not taking the information in – we are taking it all in, we are just not able to critically evaluate it as we would with information coming from other sources.

Video Games have been shown to lower brain activity to below that of the Delta frequency!

The TV screen flicker rate alone is known to induce mesmerized states in people. This flicker rate is the rate at which the screen image is updated, generally about 50 or 60 times a second. DARPA is a US military funded research programme. One of their endeavours concerned developing TV flicker rates that could be played whenever a mesmerized state was required in a given section of the population.

Endorphins are released by overexposure to light. The radiant light from televisions causes a release of endorphins. Researcher Herbert Krugman showed that while viewers are watching television, the right hemisphere is twice as active as the left, a neurological anomaly. The crossover from left to right releases a surge of the body’s natural opiates: endorphins, which include beta-endorphins and enkephalins. Endorphins are structurally identical to opium and its derivatives (morphine, codeine, heroin, etc.). Activities that release endorphins (also called opioid peptides) are usually habit-forming (we rarely call them addictive). These include cracking knuckles and strenuous exercise. External opiates act on the same receptor sites (opioid receptors) as endorphins, so there is little difference between the two.

Even casual television viewers experience such opiate-withdrawal symptoms if they stop watching TV for a prolonged period of time. An article from South Africa’s Eastern Province Herald (October 1975) described two experiments in which people from various socio-economic milieus were asked to stop watching television. In one experiment, several families volunteered to turn off their TV’s for just one month. The poorest family gave in after one week, and the others suffered from depression, saying they felt as though they had “lost a friend.” In the other experiment, 182 West Germans agreed to kick their television viewing habit for a year, with the added bonus of payment. None could resist the urge longer than six months, and over time all of the participants showed the symptoms of opiate-withdrawal: increased anxiety, frustration, and depression.

Herbert Krugman’s research proved that watching television numbs the left brain and leaves the right brain to perform all cognitive duties. This has some harrowing implications for the effects of television on brain development and health. For one, the left hemisphere is the critical region for organizing, analyzing, and judging incoming data. The right brain treats incoming data uncritically, and it does not decode or divide information into its component parts.

Researches into the effects of TV have warned that children under two years of age shouldn’t watch any at all due to the negative impact on various areas of a child’s development which include skills of observation, speech, hearing, depth perception, reading ability, inducing attention deficit type behaviour, a lack of motor skills due to immobile viewing habits and so on. TV is a wholly inappropriate and ineffectual teaching tool. It’s pointless having debates lamenting the demise of intellectual ability and endeavour when intellects have never even had a chance to naturally and properly grow due to the numbing effects of television on children particularly.

Conversely its worth noting that radio has the opposite effect and actually develops a higher rate of concentration, the audio forcing people to be stimulated to visualise what they hear. Reading of course further extends the ability to concentrate and critically examine information over longer periods.

Even the style of TV production these days is geared toward an amphetamine-like addiction people have with regard to information reception. The cadence of scene changes, that is the rate and beat at which images are changing on the screen is very fast and further inclines the mind under development to be unable to concentrate for long periods on long pieces of textual information. Average rates of attention span are down from a few decades ago to mere minutes where once it was more than one hour for deep critical thinking.

Studies have linked quality of life to high vocabulary rates which heavy TV consumption impacts negatively. If you have good communication skills you are better able to express the world you live in and how you define it and if this is a yardstick to judge by then for many of our countries’ young folk the world must be very banal indeed. A poor vocabulary means you have a myopic existence, you have a tunnel-like perception of this great planet and your quality of life is adversely effected. Just listening to pop stars in particular, the idols of the young, can make one cringe with embarrassment at the vacuous and inarticulate clap-trap they come out with.

We live in a world today were people’s personalities are formed by unreal things: TV, the music industry, video games, movies, the effects of drugs (be that of the recreational or psychotropic variety). Virtual reality dominates the interests of a lot of people out there, even young adults and people of my own age group in their 30′s. All conversation is about this or that TV show, the latest new video game on the latest new console or who’s top of the Premiership. It’s a sad state of affairs.

All these negative effects on society are known, they are in fact engineered and planned for. A New World Order is coming into view. Not so long ago in India, the then British Chancellor Gordon Brown, , in a speech mentioned this “New Global Order” that is being brought into existence. This New Order will be the stuff of nightmare as envisaged by Orwell. In fact I don’t think even Orwell had the vision to picture the dystopian technocratic dictatorship in store for humanity. Huxley was somewhat closer to the mark in his novel, “Brave New World “.

The TV is our soma, it keeps us mesmerized and dulled while our freedoms are revoked and laws introduced to make criminals of us all so the New World Order can get on with the business of creating a prison planet with a prison based economic system, much like modern China.

Get rid of your TV’s today. Exchange them for projection systems if you’re not yet ready to give up the video drome. We need to reclaim our personalities from the agencies and organisations that use TV to claim our minds, create our consumerist loyalties and keep us from truth, reality and a full-spectrum human life. We need to reclaim for ourselves and instil in future generations a sense of wonder at the real world and its panoply of real life heroes and people genuinely worth admiring.

“Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries of more. School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?” – Captain Beatty in Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury wrote his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 in 1950. Most kids were required to read this book when they were seventeen years old. Having just re-read the novel at the age of forty-seven makes you realize how little you knew at seventeen. It is 165 pages of keen insights into today’s American society. Bradbury’s hedonistic dark future has come to pass. His worst fears have been realized. The American public has willingly chosen to be distracted and entertained by electronic gadgets 24 hours per day. Today, reading books is for old fogies. Most people think Bradbury’s novel was a warning about censorship. It was not. It was a warning about TV and radio turning the minds of Americans to mush.

It is now sixty years later and his warning went unheeded. A self imposed ignorance by a vast swath of Americans is reflected in these statistics:

* 33% of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

* 42% of college graduates never read another book after college.

* 80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

* 70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

* 57% of new books are not read to completion.

* There are over 17,000 radio stations and over 2,000 TV stations in America today.

* Each day in the U.S., people spend on average 4.7 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines.

* The projected average number of hours an individual (12 and older) will spend watching television this year is 1,750.

* In a 65-year life, the average person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube.

* Number of 30-second TV commercials seen in a year by an average child – 20,000

* Number of videos rented daily in the U.S. – 6 million

* Number of public library items checked out daily – 3 million

* Percentage of Americans who can name The Three Stooges – 59%

* Percentage who can name at least three justices of the U.S. Supreme Court – 17%

When Ray Bradbury wrote his novel in the basement of the UCLA library on a pay per hour typewriter, television was in its infancy. In 1945 there were only 10,000 television sets in all of America. By 1950, there were 6 million sets. The US population was 150 million living in 43 million households. Only 9% of these households had a TV. There was one TV for every 25 people. Americans read books and newspapers to be aware of their world. Today, there are 335 million television sets in the country. The US population is 310 million living in 115 million households. There is a TV in 99% of these households, with an average of 3 TVs per household. Your reality is whatever the corporate media decides is your reality.

Bradbury envisioned gigantic flat screen wall TVs that interacted with the audience and people wearing seashell earbuds so they could listen to the radio. Anything to keep from reading, thinking, questioning or wondering. Today, anesthetized kids and non-thinking adults sit in front of the boob tube with their Playstation controllers in hand and a microphone attached to their ear, killing zombies while talking to their fellow warriors, sitting in their own living rooms somewhere in the world. Apple has sold 260 million iPods since 2001 that allow people to zone out and live in their own private music world, never needing to interact or associate with their fellow humans. Millions of Blackberry addicts roam the streets of our cities like androids, forcing alert pedestrians to bob and weave to avoid head-on collisions with these connected egomaniacs. They are overwhelmed with their self importance.

For those who have not read the book since high school, or have never read the novel, here is a quick summary of Fahrenheit 451:

Live every day as if it were your last…and then some day you’ll be right.– H.H. “Breaker” Morant

History is not likely to speak well of today’s Americans. While the people of nations around the globe stand up to their oppressors, Americans sit idly by as their government runs roughshod over their life, liberty and property.

When will the American people recognize the full frontal assault being perpetrated against them?

As we speak, large-scale protests and mass demonstrations continue in more than a dozen countries as citizens strike back against injustice, criminality and brutal austerity measures imposed by their corrupt governments.

In the UK, more than 50,000 students recently took to the streets to protest a spike in tuition costs.

In Greece, workers clashed with police outside the Finance Ministry over frozen pensions and cuts in their salaries.

In Germany, tens of thousands demonstrated over the weekend to protest government policies and social inequities in advance of Merkel’s Democrat party’s national meeting.

In early October, thousands of Icelanders stormed their parliament with renewed anger over the deepening financial crisis, and against those responsible for it. Many of their politicians were forced to flee out the back door, where they were pelted with eggs, flour and tomatoes.

In France, transportation and commerce was brought to a virtual standstill throughout vast portions of the country, as angry citizens railed against their government for increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62.

Press coverage of these events gets little attention here in the United States. When the press does cover it, they portray the demonstrators as greedy layabouts who have become dependant on government handouts. In reality, people of these countries know full well that they are being made to do without in order to enrich powerful central banks that conspired with corrupt politicians to loot their economies. The people have had enough, and they’re letting their governments know it.

If only we had the same spirit. When will the American people recognize the full frontal assault being perpetrated against them? When will they realize that, they too, are being made to do with less, so that their corrupt politicians can fulfill the unlawful arrangements they have made with the very same central banks and financial institutions that are bringing down nations around the globe?

Right now, millions of Americans have lost (or are losing) their homes to foreclosure as a result of the same kind of collusion between politicians and the banking cartels.

In 2008, the banking elite threatened to shut down the U.S. economy unless corrupt politicians in Washington D.C. forced through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Though more than 90% of the American public voiced opposition to the bill, their words fell on deaf ears. To add insult to injury, the passage of TARP was actually celebrated by members of congress, who stood at the podium with broad smiles and giggled as they signed the hellish legislation.

Billions of taxpayer dollars went to the bankers to rescue them from foolish investments in mortgage-backed securities. The TARP funds were supposed to be used to clear the bank’s books and free up lending to the American people. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the bankers tightened lending even more and used their newfound wealth to pay debts, acquire other banks, pay huge bonuses to their employees, and engage in more irresponsible investment activities.

To their credit, the American people found the gumption to confront those politicians in town hall meetings across the nation. But the media—being the obedient lapdogs to the federal government that they are—quickly pounced upon these unhappy citizens; labeling them as dangerous upstarts who were working outside the parameters of civil and polite discourse that the government deems manageable. Raising your voice was equated with violence, hoisting signs was considered racist and gatherings were announced as potential staging grounds for domestic terrorism.

How absurd—that the mainstream media would think it could even be possible to kowtow the American people into compliance—especially when you measure these relatively mild examples of public opposition against the large-scale strikes and civil unrest we are witnessing in other countries.

Glenn Beck’s “Rally to Restore Honor” summoned thousands of disgruntled Americans to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Days before, he pleaded with his audience to abandon their signs and silly clothes because it was making them easy targets of ridicule by the “progressive” left. The people complied—and when they attended the function—they were treated to a ceremony of military worship and religious devotion to the state of Israel. It was a Hollywood production. It was organized, polite, and nobody raised their voice. People soon forgot about the imminent financial threats that were bearing down upon them. Instead, they embraced what every American should feel good about: a bloated defense budget and a toxic relationship with a country that has caused us nothing but trouble.

Shortly after the Beck event, the left staged a demonstration of their own. Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” was a mockery of demonstrations, an anti-demonstration if you will.

The people who attended that function did so—not to address the criminality of their government—but to mock those who did. They came out enmass to parody the “Teabaggers,” fellow citizens enraged over Obama’s spending policies and mandatory healthcare legislation.

Both events were completely partisan efforts, used to define the line between Democrat and Republican voters. Both events were used to quell dissent and stifle speech. Both were a success—but not for the American people. It was a success for the government, and a major testament on the power the mainstream media has over the American public.

Americans—in large part—have become nothing more than stupid, scared, spoiled rotten slaves to their favorite TV programs, politicians and electronic toys. Accusing them of such is just about the only thing that will make them angry. Americans still maintain that they are the freest, wealthiest and most moral people on the face of the planet. But they are the only ones who think so. In a Newsweek article entitled “Post Anti-Americanism,” Howard Fineman writes:

“When you read about America in European newspapers, what you are likely to find is a tone bordering on pity. The U.S. is depicted as a fraying empire of obesity, ignorance, debt, gridlock, stagnation, and mindless war. Sure, the iPad is cool, but it is evidence of what America was, not what it will be again. The stories are not angry, accusatory, or even ideological. It’s worse: they are condescendingly elegiac.”

I think most will agree that being pitied is far worse than being hated. Pity is leveled against those who are unwilling, or unable, to stand up for themselves. People of other nations pity us because they see in us what we are unable to see in ourselves: that we are weak.

I'm in the process of researching info for the creation of an "Unplug the Signal" book. Please share any documents or info you know of when it comes to the subject television and behavior studies in regards to tv. Please share any other valuable info you may know about too.Thank you,

Nathan JanesUnplugthesignal.com

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Almost our entire world now is a hoax! Everything you know as Truth...is Fake.

I'm in the process of researching info for the creation of an "Unplug the Signal" book. Please share any documents or info you know of when it comes to the subject television and behavior studies in regards to tv. Please share any other valuable info you may know about too.Thank you,

Recently, several videos of people falling as the result of staring in to the glow of their electronic mobile devices have become the focus of media attention. This trend is becoming more and more prevalent as texting while walking is a major safety concern in cities such as New York and Los Angeles. In a very Lemmings fashion, people are blindly walking off ledges, in to streets, and even in to fountains because they just can’t take their eyes off of the little screen in front of them.

In this first video you see a 10-year-old boy playing a video game while going either to or from school in the subway. Needless to say, while his attention was drawn to his video game, he continued to walk forward until he landed on the subway tracks below. Thankfully, a bystander was quick to jump down and rescue the boy before a train arrived.

In another incident, highly publicized by the media, a woman was walking through the mall texting when she fell in to the fountain. The video below was taken by mall staff watching the CCTV cameras and having a chuckle at her expense. She has since threatened to file a lawsuit against the mall for failing to respond and allowing a mocking video to be leaked to YouTube by their employees.

It’s clear that a hazard is present here that wasn’t in generation’s past. Many people have become so infatuated with the content displayed on tiny LCD screens that they unconsciously throw their sense of well-being out the window in favor of finding out the latest gossip or achieving a high score.

The ones who are awake can at least see through the facade, but sports is not bad in of itself. I never really liked watching sports myself. Get rid of the mind control and the subliminal messaging and people would figure it all out for themselves. We do need escapism in some form, if you concentrated on everything that is wrong with the world all the time, you will go crazy. If we did not need escapism, there would be no need for arts of any kind.

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'We play the game with the bravery of being out of range.' - Roger Waters

If anyone thought the President’s speech defending the attack on Libya was broadcast a bit earlier than other Presidential speeches in the past, it might surprise you to know that you were right. When scheduling a time for the speech to be televised, the White House consulted with television networks as it normally does.

However, this time around, a conscious decision was made to broadcast before 8pm. Why? Because 8 p.m. is primetime and broadcasting at 8 p.m. would have coincided with “Dancing With the Stars.” I’m not kidding. This was reported by USA Today, CNN, and ABC News Radio.

Just in case you don’t believe it, CNN reports:

As for the timing of President Obama’s Libya speech Monday night, the New York Times’ Bill Carter reports that the White House scheduled it around network shows, including ABC’s ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ In the end, all involved agreed on 7:30 p.m. ET, which meant the speech would end before ABC’s hit show – among other programs on NBC, CBS, and FOX, to name a few.

There is really no way to look at this decision in a positive light. The best possible scenario is that Americans are so addicted to brain cell murdering programs like “Dancing With the Stars” that they simply have no time or interest in watching a speech by a President who has no real connection to them and is only there to give them the party line on an agenda that they have no control over. That’s actually the best view I can think of, because at least it implies that the American people are aware that their government is unresponsive to anything they have to say.

However, another more frightening view (the one that I take) is that our controllers are aware of this. They know that regardless of what is going on in the world or how it affects them, Americans are quite content to sit on their couches growing bigger and dumber with each passing hour. They know that rather than forcing themselves to form an opinion on an issue such as the new Libyan war, they would rather watch a ridiculous show where washed-up celebrities do things they would otherwise never do except for the fact that their careers are almost over and they need whatever money they can get at the time.

Our controllers know that while bombs fall on innocent Libyan civilians, Americans will not raise so much as a finger to stop it because they are too busy immersing themselves in trivia and the subconscious desire to watch famous people fail. That is, after all, the only thing we have left in this country — the ability to watch others self-destruct so that we can feel a little better about our own lives. Of course, this saccharine version of self-respect only lasts as long as the program. Eventually we all have to get on with our dull, boring, and generally non-productive existence.

Indeed, our controllers know this quite well because it is the system they created. For those who are afraid that our society is in danger of becoming something out of Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World, I have some very disappointing news — it already has.

Our culture has degenerated into such a state where government officials and the mainstream media can now launch wars under the most outlandish methods of justification using recycled scare tactics based on interchangeable villains without the general public even noticing.

America is now involved in five wars and, realistically speaking, the average American would never be able to list all of them. Neverthless, it began with Afghanistan and the official fairy tale of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden. It then shifted to Iraq and bin Laden, which shifted into Iraq and WMDs, which, years later, shifted yet again to WMDs and bad intelligence. No doubt Americans are still convinced CIA-front “al-Qaeda” was involved, even though the US government doesn’t even try to hold this line anymore.

We then moved to “terrorists” crossing the border in Pakistan to Afghanistan, which justified the US murder of civilians in this country. Likewise, under the false pretenses of “al-Qaeda” operatives in Yemen and Somalia, the United States has been dropping bombs on these countries as well.

Now, in Libya, a fifth front has emerged. Unfortunately, the general American public having been bombarded by a myriad of boogeymen to be afraid of, has now reached the levels of being constantly so afraid that they can now be completely controlled by this fear. Yet, in the midst of it, they remain unable to articulate exactly what they are afraid of. In their minds, the term “terrorism” not only conjures images of Osama bin Laden and Muslim fundamentalists, but of all Middle Eastern countries (except Israel), American militias, anyone who speaks out against their government’s actions or doesn’t conform to narrow societal standards, plagues, flu, economic collapse, unemployment, and even the prospect of death itself. Logic no longer plays a part, if it ever did, in the culture of fear in which we now exist.

Intellectually, we have fallen so far as a nation that we cannot even describe the boogeyman Osama bin Laden and the fairy tales fed to us by our mainstream media and government controllers. We cannot even describe the details of exactly why Ghadaffi is such an evil man. In 2011, all that is needed is that the ever present channel of fear be tapped in to with a few mentions of “terrorism,” “al-Qaeda,” “extremists,” or “national security,” and the American people willingly rush off to war with little or no idea of what exactly they are rushing off to fight.

This is why a new war has been launched in Libya which is both illegal and immoral, a massive cost to the taxpayer, an act of blatant aggression, and the most obviously unconstitutional military action in American history with barely a peep from the citizenry.

Nevertheless, President Obama certainly walked a fine line Monday night. Indeed, he showed courage rarely expressed by American Presidents. Obama chose to present himself before the American people on the same night that “Dancing With the Stars” was scheduled to go on. One false move could have spelled disaster for him, as the President would have clashed with other, more fun, forms of entertainment. His plan could have backfired. His speech could have run too long. “Dancing With the Stars” could have been interrupted and, if that had happened, we might have finally seen a revolt in this country.

People of interest in the Flicker/TV/Cinema mind control research area...

Jan Evangelista Purkyně - Anatomist, and physiologist(17 December 1787 - 28 July 1869) was a Czech Anatomist, and physiologist.

A Czechoslovakian physician who talked about persistence of vision and the ability of the retina to retain images after the eyes no long see the subject. He wrote on light intensity and how when light decreases, red objects fade quicker than objects that are blue when they are of the same brightness.

One of his works was 'Observations and Experiments Investigating the Physiology of Senses and New Subjective Reports about Vision'.

Purkyne is also known for coining the terms 'plasma', 'protoplasm' and recognized fingerprints as important to criminal investigations.

Purkyně was born in Libochovice, Bohemia. In 1819 he graduated from the University of Prague with a degree in medicine, where he was appointed a Professor of Physiology after writing his doctoral dissertation. Working at the university, he discovered the Purkinje effect, whereby as light intensity decreases red objects seem to fade faster than blue objects of the same brightness. He published two volumes Observations and Experiments Investigating the Physiology of Senses and New Subjective Reports about Vision, which contributed to the emergence of the science of experimental psychology. He created the world's first Department of Physiology at the University of Breslau in Prussia in 1839 and the world's first official physiology laboratory in 1842.

Purkyně also recognised the importance of the work of Eadweard Muybridge. Purkyně constructed his own version of zoetrope which he called forolyt. He put nine photos of him shot from various sides to the disc and entertained his grandchildren by showing them how he, an old and famous professor, is turning around at great speed. (Souček, 1963).

He was one of the best known scientists of his time. Such was his fame that when people from outside Europe wrote letters to him, all that they needed to put as the address was "Purkyně, Europe".

He is buried in the Czech National Cemetery in Vyšehrad, Prague, Czech Republic.

Eadweard Muybridge - Photographer and inventor(April 9, 1830 – May 8, 1904) was an English photographer, known primarily for his early use of multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the celluloid film strip that is still used today.

John Grigsby Geiger - AuthorBorn in Ithaca, New York, and graduated in history from the University of Alberta. The author of five books of non-fiction, his work has been translated into nine languages. He is Editorial Board Editor at The Globe and Mail, and a Senior Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto. He is a Governor of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and Chairman of the Society's Expeditions Committee, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Explorers Club, and a Member of the Advisory Board of Wings Worldquest.

He is best known for his discovery of the cut-up technique used by William S. Burroughs. With Ian Somerville he invented the Dreamachine, a flicker device designed as an art object to be viewed with the eyes closed. It was in painting, however, that Gysin devoted his greatest efforts, creating calligraphic works inspired by Japanese and Arabic scripts. Burroughs later stated that "Brion Gysin was the only man I ever respected."

Ian Somerville - Cambridge mathematicianThere is very little information that I have been able to find on Ian Somerville other than he was William S. Burroughs' lover and he assisted Brion Gysin in the creation of the Dreamachine. I would suggest that he made the mathematical calculations allowing the Dreamachine to produce a flicker rate of 11hz using a 78rpm phonograph as the rotation device. He could be the connection to a NPO or think tank such as the Tavistock Institute.

Dr.W.Grey Walter - NeurophysiologistBorn in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1910. His parents moved to England in 1915, where he was educated at Westminster School and afterwards in King's College, Cambridge, in 1931. He failed to obtain a research fellowship in Cambridge and so turned to doing basic and applied neurophysiological research in hospitals, in London, from 1935 to 1939 and then at the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol, from 1939 to 1970. He also carried out research work in the United States, in the Soviet Union and in various other places in Europe.

A respected neurophysiologist, Dr. Walter worked extensively with EEG. He discovered theta and delta waves in the electroencephalogram (the brain waves associated with light and deep sleep, respectively), and developed the first EEG brain topography machine, based on an array of spiral-scan CRTs connected to high-gain amplifiers.

In the late 1940's Dr Grey Walter carried out pioneering research on mobile autonomous robots at the Burden Neurological Institute as part of his quest to model brain function. He wanted to study the basis of simple reflex actions and to test his theory on complex behavior arising from neural interconnections. His highly successful and inspiring experiments with robot "tortoises" "Elsie" and "Elmer" were influential in the birth of the science of cybernetics, and widely read, as documented in "Scientific American" in 1950 and 1951, and in his book "The Living Brain" (1953). Recently, one of the original tortoises was found by Dr. Owen Holland, of the University of West of England, and was restored to order in 1995. A specimen of a second generation turtle is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.

Its sad we have to debate this. People don't get together anymore and when they do there looking at there slave tracker Iphones and blackberrys and thats all they want to talk about. We have been so dumbed down and conditioned that your not cool if you don't have a cretian product. No item validates you as a person. We have real problems in our society but all people care about is Jersey Shore.

Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Einstein made either of these statements. Neither appears in the comprehensive collection of quotations “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” from Princeton University Press. 1

I didn't create the above image. But that's besides the point anyway. The point is that, regardless of who the actual source of that quote happens to be, it's obviously a keen observation, and, along with the pics of cell phone addicts, calls needed attention to a worsening epidemic:

Whenever I see someone who obsessively fondles their cell phone all day, the first thought that comes to mind is: "If whoever they're texting back and worth with were suddenly standing right next to them, would they suddenly lose the urge to communicate with that person -- and begin texting someone else?"

It's gotten so bad that, if all cell phones magically stopped working for several days, people would actually start to pretend they were texting. Why? Because it's not nearly so much about "communicating" with others as it is about looking "cool" and "trendy."

In other words, cell phones are primarily a fashion accessory and only secondarily a "communication" device.

Great thread. I believe that smart phones are more dangerous than television ever was. I used to suffer from a kind of cell phone addiction. I would check it every few minutes because something was always happening on facebook .

If the elite wanted to dumb down the American public, then they have done a wonderful job. We are suffering from a form of technological ADHD. We are never satisfied; we always need a new distraction.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, reading books and alternative news sources can help us stay awake in a nation of zombies.

The study found that every hourly increase in daily television viewing at 29 months of age is associated with diminished vocabulary and math skills, classroom engagement (which is largely determined by attention skills), victimization by classmates, and physical prowess at kindergarten, according to Linda Pagani of the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine children’s hospital.

When the Ben Swann team has conference calls we certainly do not discuss pop culture. However, after watching the Miley Cyrus video pop up in my Facebook news-feed multiple times I said to myself, “What the hell, watch it.” After regaining composure from the visceral reaction- I thought, “What is wrong with this country?” This video has popped up at least 50 times in my feed, but hardly anyone is talking about Syria.

So, I ran some analytics on Google just to see how the two compared. The results were shocking. On August 25th after Miley’s VMA performance her Google peak rating went from 67 to 100 in less than 24 hours. Meanwhile, during the same period of time the US military moved cruise missiles into position to strike Syria. The reason for doing so is because the Obama administration claims that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the Syrian people. However, this is extremely debatable and has not been proven. In fact, multiple sources claim that the Syrian rebels are actually the ones who used the chemical weapons- not the Assad regime. Other sources claim the opposite. Should it not be necessary to at least first verify where the chemical weapons came from? Should Congress not be yelling at the top of their lungs for the unconstitutional move by President Obama? Ben has been reporting on this developing situation for days.

The world is now positioning itself for what could possibly be the beginning of the next world war. France, Great Britain and the USA are now aligning against China, Syria, Russia and Iran. With such massive military force beginning to mobilize dependent upon the supposed use of chemical weapons one would assume that the peak search value for chemical attacks in Syria would skyrocket. On August 25th the peak search value for chemical attacks in Syria actually fell to a value of 3, which is down from a value of 4 only 24 hours earlier. The term “Syria” is valued at 55, which is also down 1 point in the same 24 hour period (Update 1).

The 2013 edition of the VMAs was not about music. It wasn’t even about the symbolism I’ve described in past years. It was basically MTV saying: “There is nothing to celebrate in pop music this year, here’s an awkward, cringe worthy display of everything that is wrong in the entertainment industry”.

I wrote extensive articles about past VMA awards because they were filled with occult symbolism and messages. This year, not so much. It was about promoting major artists and their newest albums. But mostly, it was about providing a “shocking” moment that would get mass media talking for days. Miley Cyrus provided it.

Miley Cyrus: The Industry Slave Chosen to Take the Fall

Miley Cyrus’ display at the VMAs was qualified by many as “trashy” and “embarrassing”. It was indeed a strange sight to see. It was as if she was doing it on purpose to embarrass herself. Well, here’s a moment of clarity: It WAS done on purpose and, moreseo, it was ALL staged. People commenting on Miley Cyrus appear to forget one, massive detail: There is an enormous marketing machine behind Miley Cyrus and there always was.

Miley’s image has been heavily marketed byDisney since the days she took on the role ofHannah Montana – a girl who (appropriately enough) had a stage alter persona, with a different wig. Hannah Montana products oftenhad butterflies on them, a slick reminder ofhow she was a Disney programming slave.

Miley is now signed with Hollywood Records, a record Label that was founded by Michael Eisgner, the CEO of Disney. Therefore, despite the appearances, Miley and her image are still owned by Disney. Hollywood Records also owns other child stars such as Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez and the Jonas Brothers. Every artist in the record label’s stable has a carefully crafted image to be marketed to its target public.

As a product of Mickey Mouse programming Miley underwent a classic “good girl gone bad” treatment. From a good, wholesome daddy’s girl, Miley turned into a bratty, sex freak who keeps sticking out her tongue and twerking for no reason. While most people are probably tsking at Miley, they do not realize that this whole thing coincided with the release of her new album – and that it was all ordered by her handlers. In other words, she was selected and programmed to be this year’s main example of a “good girl gone bad”, a process the occult elite wants the public to constantly witness. They want the masses to see innocence and wholesomeness turn into sleaze and trash. They want pop culture and the youth in general follow the same process. While alchemy is about turning stone into gold, the masses are made to witness the opposite process.

Miley’s VMA performance is about a child star who was beloved by millions of young people showing what the industry has done to her. It is about shattering the innocence of her fans by having them witness her metamorphosis into one giant sex-obsessed caricature. I’m using the word caricature because it is safe to say that Miley was not 100% herself during the VMA’s. Her oversexualized demeanor was characteristic of a Beta programming slave who had the switched turned “on”. It was however not only about being overtly sexual, it was also (and mostly) about being annoying and embarrassing herself – as if it was a sick, humiliating ritual. Dressed and styled to look like a bratty child, jumping around with giant teddy bears, Miley’s performance was all about getting a negative reaction from the public while continuing the ongoing agenda of sexualizing everything that is related to childhood.

Things got even stranger when Robin Thicke came out to perform Blurred Lines. As its name somewhat stipulates, that song blurs the line between being a flirty and all out creepy. Its video has a strange handler-slave vibe, where Robin, Pharell and T.I. are all sharply dressed while the women dancing around them are completely naked…And being sung lines such as “You’re an animal”.

Miley distraction predominates as the elite prepare to decimate Syria.

Kurt NimmoInfowars.comAugust 27, 2013

Following a speech by blue blood Skull and Bones member and current Secretary of State, John Kerry, on Monday setting the stage for an attack, the corporate media is now reporting that an attack may arrive Thursday.

No doubt the Miley-turned-into-pole-dancer meme will still be going strong in three days and distracting millions of Americans as the missiles fly in Damascus with the inevitable “collateral damage” of men, women and children who have nothing to do with al-Assad or the political prerogatives of the global elite.

On Monday, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that a scant 9 percent of respondents approve of the Obama administration attacking Syria. Even approval of Congress ranks higher at 15 percent approval, according to the Washington Post.

Max Fisher, writing for the former crown jewel of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, seems to be as clueless as the rest of the establishment media: “The calculus for and against is complicated enough in foreign policy terms. But the White House is also a political institution, and it will surely keep the domestic politics, which appear to oppose any intervention very strongly, well in mind,” he writes.

In fact, as should be obvious, most of all to those who claim to cover politics in the district of criminals, the White House does not give a whit about “domestic politics” or what the American people think. The White House, after all, is a puppet stage where marionettes posing as esteemed leaders and their over-paid adjutants read from prepared scripts.

Blue blood Kerry’s scripted speech delivered yesterday from the State Department, just down the street from the Council on Foreign Relations (as former Sec. of State Clinton fawningly admitted in 2009), and for good reason, is a primary example of this sort of tedious choreography. Kerry made effusive reference to the children killed in a chemical attack he explicitly blamed on Bashar al-Assad (minus any evidence, never mind compelling evidence) while, of course, steering away from the obvious: cruise missiles, fired willy-nilly into populated urban areas like Damascus, will kill many more innocent children.

If America is, as our appointed leaders and their stage handlers repeatedly tell us, a “representative democracy” (as opposed to a constitutional republic, as the founders designed), then all Americans will once again have the blood of innocents on their hands in much the same way the German people had blood on their hands after Hitler and his Wall Street financed henchmen finished killing millions (a track record exceeded only by the psychopaths Josef Stalin and Mao Tse-tung).

Of course, America is not a democracy or a republic. It is a fascist police state, albeit soft at this juncture in history. It is a plutocracy ruled for and by a small number of international bankers and transnational corporations.

If Syria ends up a smoking ruin, its civilian infrastructure destroyed and population poisoned by depleted uranium, it will be a criminal act completely beyond not only the control of the average American, but his and her comprehension as well.

Polls aside, most Americans have but the slightest inkling of what the corporate-bankster state and its military machine do, as evidenced by Iraq. It is not a subject of documentaries broadcast on CNN, Fox News, or the other Mockingbird alphabet news conglomerates. Reality and dead babies, especially when numbered in the hundreds of thousands, are now routinely papered over.

Instead, we are distracted by a 20-year old woman, a corporate scripted role model for millions of girls who believe that one has to act like a prostitute in order to be popular and cool. It does not matter that young women and girls in Syria will, in short order, be reduced to bloody corpses, possibly by Thursday.

Relatives Gather From Across The Country To Stare Into Screens Together

The OnionDecember 25, 2013

OAK CREEK, WI—Turning on the television while unpacking tablets, iPhones, and laptops from their suitcases, members of the McPherson family communed from across the nation this holiday season for several straight days of staring into electronic screens while in the same room together, sources confirmed Friday. “Nothing puts me in the Christmas spirit more than sitting down on the couch with my parents and siblings, turning on the TV, and then proceeding to either look at the screen or gaze down into my glowing tablet display for hours on end,” 28-year-old Andrew McPherson told reporters, adding that he always felt most connected to his relatives when they were both silently gazing into glowing screens of some kind. “It’s just great to get home for a while and spend some quality time not speaking a single word to my relatives, whether that’s by sipping hot cocoa with my sister while we both check our emails, or by gathering the whole clan for a nice holiday meal where everyone is fixedly looking down at the text messages on their phones—’tis the season, you know?”

Whenever I see someone who obsessively fondles their cell phone all day, the first thought that comes to mind is: "If whoever they're texting back and worth with were suddenly standing right next to them, would they suddenly lose the urge to communicate with that person -- and begin texting someone else?"

It's gotten so bad that, if all cell phones magically stopped working for several days, people would actually start to pretend they were texting. Why? Because it's not nearly so much about "communicating" with others as it is about looking "cool" and "trendy."

In other words, cell phones are primarily a fashion accessory and only secondarily a "communication" device.

Does not the following excerpt validate the above?

Interviewer: "Some people think teenagers should not have cell phones. Why, as a teenager, is it important to have a cell phone?"

[...]

Teen girl A: "It's sad, but you're not cool if you don't have a phone, because you can't socialize with people. Like, you're not cool if you don't have a Twitter."

Teen girl B: "Well, I don't want to be a loser. Like, if you don't have a Twitter and Instagram, and you don't have, like, over 2,000 followers, it's like you're a loser at the school."

You see them staggering down our streets, heads bowed as if in prayer making the occasional grunting noise. Mindless drooling de-animated human husks walking blindly into fountains, crosswalks and lamp posts. Wake up People. We are in the middle of a science fiction movie here. Welcome to the Invasion of the Phone Zombies.

Yes, the Zombie Apocalypse has materialized and we are it. Everywhere you look you find the deathlike trance- frozen faces of we necromantic slaves with twitching fingers. Spending endless empty hours mesmerized by our tiny screens. An entire society that can’t remember its own phone number, much less that of any significant other. Of course, compared to our magical phones, there are no significant others.

Our smart phones are being manipulated by some very dumb people. Sure, amazing things can be accomplished: check the weather patterns in Outer Mongolia. Translate French past participles into Farsi. Order a chess set made out of imitation crab meat in the shape of the characters from 12 Years a Slave and have it delivered to our house before getting back from work. But in the meantime, we are developing the attention span of high- speed lint. And the personalities.

The contagion has spread everywhere. Stall zombies in public rest rooms that hog the enclosed sanctum to play a quick round of Fruit Ninja. Or two. Nightlife zombies who ignore the jokes onstage so they can respond with multiple LOLs on their electronic leash. Tangentially ambulatory zombies who get into their car but refuse to leave parking spots until checking in with High Command. Vacation zombies who spend thousands of dollars to stare at their phones in distant exotic lands.

And we zombies have proved desperate to swell our ranks. Zombifying others via slide presentations of cute cats cavorting. Even attempting to recruit potential zombie converts through such subhuman treatment as incessant shame and humiliation. “Seriously. That’s your phone? Who made it: Daewoo? Is that the fabled rotary cell phone? Must be neat to have Teddy Roosevelt on your speed dial. Bet your roaming charges are huge. Play much ‘snake’ lately?”

Adults in the United States will spend more than five hours each day on "nonvoice mobile activities," including Internet use on phones and tablets, and about four-and-a-half hours watching TV, according to the study, which looked at data from a variety of sources including academic publications and audience measurement outlets. The average American will spend almost an hour more on his or her phone this year compared to last year, according to the report.

As much as we'd like to heap blame for the change on the poor offerings on television these days (not enough "Breaking Bad" too much "Real Housewives"), the reason behind the shift actually has more to do with Americans' increasing use of smart phones. While the average amount of time spent watching TV and on computers has not changed much over the years, people are spending more time online on their phones.